Unnecessary Words
by ilurandir
Summary: There is no difference between then and now, Remus thinks. No difference between the long, lean and lithe boy tangled in Remus's red sheets in the seventh year Gryffindor dorm, with his nose pressed just there against the top of Remus's bony spine. No difference, he assures himself, between that Sirius, and this. Please read and review


There is no difference between then and now, Remus thinks. No difference between the long, lean and lithe boy tangled in Remus's red sheets in the seventh year Gryffindor dorm, with his nose pressed just there against the top of Remus's bony spine. No difference, he assures himself, between that Sirius, and this - the too-thin man pressed against him, all heat and angles and bones, his head tucked down under Remus's chin. This is still the same Sirius, although Remus isn't used to being the one who is the protector.

The man who starts into wakefulness now, eyes dark and wide and still a little far away (distant eyes, as though he is just a little bit more untouchable; a little bit more trapped in the dark corners of his own mind, his own memories). This man with the wide dark eyes is still the same Sirius that Remus left sleeping in the early morning sunshine on so many winter mornings, so many winters ago - the warmth Remus left in order to start the tea and, therefore, the day, without so much as making him stir.

These days, Remus can no longer leave the bed without waking him. Sirius is always wired and wild, alert and alarmed. He no longer sleeps splayed out, no longer infuriatingly takes up the entire bed. Now he lays curled tightly, the bones in his back visible through too-thin skin that radiates cold and heat more than other bodies seem to. Skin that is covered in scars and tattoos that Remus has tried and failed to understand. Tokens of Azkaban. It has taken Remus a long time to learn how to meld against this new body.

It took much less time for Remus to learn to sleep very still.

"Sirius," he whispers, in the middle of the night, as though Sirius could hear him through the screams tearing past his lips, half sitting in Remus's bed, so suddenly woken by some dream. Remus touches his cheek, and Sirius eyes find his face in the darkness and he doesn't know him, until…

Until he blinks and the terror is gone, and then he _does_. Sirius dark eyes are the same grey that Remus remembers from their school days, and he watches Sirius's thin chest heave as he scans the corners of the room, illuminated only from the one candle they have burning, enchanted not to burn out. Sirius can't sleep with the darkness pressing in on him, no matter how hard he was pressing in on Remus. "It suffocates me," he'd said, "Like a living thing."

Remus pushes his fingers into Sirius's hair. Slowly, slowly Sirius eases back down. They watch each other, faces so close they can feel each other's breath - feel where their lips might meet skin if they were to dare.

Sirius reaches out and pulls Remus's head down under his own chin, and Remus smells the sweat on his throat and, somewhere, tang - the smell of living blood. He knows other people don't smell things like this, like he does. But it was always like this. No difference, he tells himself for the thousandth time, between then and now. It is still comfort.

"Remus…"

He must have dozed off, but it is still dark, and he is coming out of sleep-haze, and for a moment he thought that maybe it was the evening after the Moon, and Sirius had climbed into bed to lay with him as he so often had. For a moment Remus was young, barely 16, too strong and too fragile and covered in scars because of a thing he could not control.

And then there were the tattoos on Sirius's chest and the much too-long hair, all tangles now, too thin to take any shape or curl any longer and he remember where they were and how old he felt. "Yes?" he whispered, hoarse, into the darkness.

Sirius tilted his head a little, watching Remus with unnerving intensity.

"What is it, Padfoot?" he whispered, more urgently, reaching out to touch him. Sirius jerked his face away and twisted around, legs off the bed, bare feet on the cold floor. And he was painful to look at - so thin, so scared. The muscles from Quidditch gone, not a trace of the boyish softness that Remus could remember, even now, from when they were only in their first year. His heart twisted, because he didn't know what to do, when Sirius was like this - not wanting to be touched, strange and angry, beneath the surface. Remus sometimes thought he could feel it as strongly as Sirius did, that anger - only it was terrible because it wasn't his own, and he couldn't change it.

So he didn't want to be touched now. Remus sat up and stared at him in the flickering candle-light and wondered in the longest silence in the world, a sharp stillness, what to do. This wasn't the Sirius of earlier that evening, when they'd gone up to bed - laughing at biting at Remus's throat while Remus tried to hold him back, the soft breaths that were half laughter and half "Sirius, people will _see_ those marks, sod off!"He'd said that even as he pressed and arched into him. And then Sirius's hands skated down his thighs to hitch them over his own, where he knelt between Remus's legs and everything became "Oh God, Oh _God_." Sirius's curtain of hair had fallen around them both. That Sirius was the Sirius of earlier that evening. He was not the Sirius of now, in the small hours, distant and alone, even with Remus so close.

Sirius made a sound now, so, so soft in the darkness, just the little intake of breath before speech, the sound of his dry lips parting. Remus waited, waited, barely breathing, and finally, Sirius spoke.

"Why do you still…?"

When had they become this proper? It had always been something of a joke at Hogwarts. And now…

"Why do I still what?" he asked the shadows on Sirius's back, that fall of long, long black hair. He watched the muscles twist, and the bones shift as he finally turned to face him, and he watched one of Sirius's pianist hand that had never touched the keys of the piano downstairs pass vaguely between them. "This…"

_No_, his mind said. He didn't want to do this. "What do you mean?" he asked, although he knew very well. _No, no, no_.

Sirius's eyes narrowed. He knew when Remus was going to make him work for something, but it wasn't games anymore, and they were both so tired. So fucking tired of games. "Why do you still want to be- _with me_?" his voice was short, annoyed. "Why do you say you love me? Because, Remus, I think- I think that maybe you don't. No, actually, I know you don't. You loved a boy who was barely twenty-one, and he's… dead."

"Sirius." Remus wished he could think of something else to say. His heart twisted, sharp and sudden. "I love you," he said, and his throat constricted.

Sirius swallowed and shook his hair back. Remus's voice was soft but sharp. Cutting past his teeth. He watched Sirius watch his right hand, as he clenched it at his side.

"I love you," he said again.

They'd only ever said it once before, those three words. In Sirius's messy flat just after New Years. The first year they were out of school. And it was strange because they both knew it, but they didn't know it. They'd only read it in the way they clutched at each other while they fucked, the way their eyes locked, the way they only ever wanted each other after the Moon…

And now Remus had said it two times in as many minutes and it fell flat between them - not because his words were empty, but because Sirius was impenetrable.

"You loved me years ago," he said to the floorboards, as though speaking to Remus's confession there. "You loved me before Azkaban."

"No, Sirius, I loved you before, fucking during, and after that place," Remus said, his voice tight with anger now, upset.

"Say it."Sirius whispered.

"Say _what_?... Azkaban."

"Do you hate that I was there?"

"…Yes. Of course, Sirius, yes, I hate it. I'd change it if I could."

"Well, you can't."

A terrible silence stretched out between them. "No," he said finally, "I can't."

"Why did you hesitate?" Sirius asked. The silences between their sentences were consistent. As though they had to force their words through the darkness.

"When?"

"When I asked you if you hated it?"

"What do you think, Sirius?" Remus snapped. "I'm trying to understand what you're getting at. You're trying to trap me in some lie that _you_ have fabricated, and I'm… I'm done with that. And that doesn't mean I'm done with you, so don't even start."

Sirius shut his mouth and for a moment they glared at each other. They knew each other too well, even after all this time. And so when something came up that they didn't know - when something happened that they didn't understand - something twisted and painful in those twelve years while Sirius was in Azkaban-

It hurt. Or no… but it was jarring. Like biting into ice mice and having them splinter and cut your gums, and then the rest of the sweet tasted like iron…

"I waited for you for _twelve years_, Sirius, even though I told myself I wasn't, even though I knew I shouldn't, I did. I was. I was _waiting for you_ and if you hadn't- if things hadn't- I would still be _fucking waiting_ so don't tell me I don't love you. Fuck, Sirius. Fuck."

He was being much too loud for this time of night. Arthur and Molly were just a few rooms over - a few rooms over to give each couple their privacy, but the walls in Grimauld place were thin and Remus's anger was too hot to hold in.

"I just wish you'd find someone better," Sirius said, standing suddenly and casting around for his trousers.

Remus sat and stared, open-mouthed. There were tears in his eyes, in his voice - he _knew_ Sirius could hear it. And yet he was so cold - he'd always been cold. And it had always cut Remus to the very quick.

He was up and at Sirius's side in an instant, his skin bare and cold in the chill air. Sirius was just zipping up his flies and Remus caught at his hands, his wrists and held on tight, moving, grappling with him, trying to meet his eyes while Sirius tried to wrench away. Something in Sirius's arm cracked - like stretching, a joint popping.

"Ow," He stilled, but his wrists were tense, disagreeable in under Remus's palms. He'd said it so defensively and so seriously that Remus couldn't help the short scoffing sound that escaped him, but it was genuine laughter and not scorn behind it.

Sirius looked pissed off, but Remus could tell by the softening of his stance that he didn't mean it. He turned them and pushed Sirius back onto the bed.

"Take your fucking trousers off," he said, so that Sirius wouldn't storm out of the room, so that he wouldn't go, and leave them like this - both too embarrassed afterwards to sort things out.

Sirius barked a laugh, but did as he was told, and Remus walked to him shifted Sirius's legs apart and slid up between them, pushing him slow, slow down on to the bed.

"Of course I hate that you were in Azkaban," he whispered, and Sirius's eyes had gone dark again, but not with fear this time. "I hate that everything's happened the way it has." His lips brushed Sirius's and they kissed, briefly. Remus didn't tell him he loved him again. That wasn't necessary. It never had been, really.

Remus kissed his collarbones. Traced his tongue along the black ink under his skin. He didn't wait for Sirius to say it back either.

"Thank you," Sirius whispered.

And it was enough.


End file.
